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Cossack host

Territorial subdivision or military formation of Cossacks within the Russian Empire

Wikipedia contributorsAdapted for Fathomly · View authors
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Source updated November 19, 2025
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A Cossack host, sometimes translated as Cossack army, was an administrative subdivision of Cossacks in the Russian Empire. Earlier the term voysko (host, in a sense as a doublet of guest) referred to Cossack organizations in their historical territories, most notable being the Zaporozhian Host of Zaporozhian Cossacks.

01Russian Empire

Each Cossack host consisted of a certain territory with Cossack settlements that had to provide military regiments for service in the Imperial Russian Army and for border patrol operations. Usually the hosts were named after the regions of their location. The stanitsa, or village, formed the primary unit of this organization.

In the Russian Empire (1721-1917), the Cossacks constituted twelve separate hosts, settled along the frontiers:

There was also a small number of the Cossacks in Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk, who would form the Yenisey Cossack Host and the Irkutsk Cossack Regiment of the Ministry of the Interior in 1917.

Cossack hosts on Russian soil were disbanded in 1920, in the course of the Russian Civil War of 1917-1922 in a deliberate process of De-Cossackization to remove their autonomy.

02List of hosts

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Sources and credits

This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Cossack host”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.

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